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North County Arts Network has a successful year

North County Arts Network (NCAN) has successfully completed its first year of operation and concluded with its final quarterly meeting for the year. What’s next? Action! With more than 80 members of the arts community attending the gathering in Carlsbad this evening, Coordinator, Daniel Foster, greeted participants with encouraging motivation to act now in order to reach out to local government officials to share funds to help support the arts within the North County region.

With North County San Diego being one-third of the entire population of San Diego County at 1.3 million people, from a total of 3.5 million people strong, most of the attention and support for the arts radiates around the city of San Diego itself rather than the surrounding communities. North County has grown to these vast numbers in just the last decade and will continue to grow as rapidly over the next. Cities like Encinitas, San Marcos, Carlsbad, Vista, Oceanside and Escondido all have their own resources and focuses within industry and towards the arts. The evenings panel discussion focused on combining all of these assets in order to help each community promote these qualities in order to help the region as a whole.

“I believe every city will create their own experience and focus,” said Jerome Kern, City of Oceanside Council Member. Regional assets are all different. Attracting businesses to the regional benefits should be considered as an attraction point to our communities. Point to those assets to help other cities and we will all benefit together.

This network of community has proven a desire, motivation and need. Thus, the NCAN will be spending the rest of its efforts in 2016 establishing the previously proposed committees for Visual and Performing Arts Programming, Arts Education, Civic and Public Art, Arts Funding and Economic Development, and Arts Marketing and Audience Development for the population of North County San Diego. All of these committees will begin action early December.

Council Member, Jerome Kern, of the City of Oceanside; Carl Morgan of the Economic Development Council of San DIego North; Coordinator, Patricia Frischer, of the San Diego Visual Arts Network; and Daniel Foster, Coordinator of North County Arts Network.

There are 2,500 regional art resources. Yet, it is still untapped. More than 700 billion dollars in revenue comes from the arts, but California is 44 in support of the arts. “We’ve always seen art as a catalyst for change all throughout history,” said Patricia Frischer, Co-ordinator for the San Diego Visual Arts Network. We should take the art so that it can travel and change in order to adapt to its environment and make that the image of NCAN’s foundation. To move within our communities and identify with the various cultural aspects that thrive within our region.

There are 429 nonprofit organization in San Diego and 44% of those nonprofits are located in North County. The arts help to support aspects of life that are economically driven. The city of Fallbrook is a great example of this, with its Avocado Festival attracting more than 100,000 tourists to their community every year, along with their hosted arts summit and support of the arts in their yet to be accredited School of Arts and Arts Center, according to Carl Morgan of San Diego North’s Economic Development Council. “If we make art the center point it becomes the economic driver” that our communities need to enrich the culture and support the arts community that helps community and business flourish.

The next quarterly event for NCAN will take place on Thursday, January 21, 2016 at the Poway Center for the Performing Arts. For more information, contact Daniel Foster at danielfosterart@aol.com